Individualistic Socialism

There was a time in the Western civilization when property rights were not clearly defined, when peasants worked on fields together and animals were kept in common feeding areas and the community harvested the yields together. My question is, could it be that we are on the path to this structure again?

Information increasingly is the value added product of importance, but information is free and the more  it is being shared, the more valuable it becomes. You can't define property rights for information. What you can do as a firm is to hire individuals of different specialization and you can pay them according to their perceived usefulness, but in the end they are free to leave and take their knowledge with them. A free association of creative workers who cannot be bound to anything. 

I call this model individualistic, because different from the peasant and herder time, the knowledge workers of today have different specialization and creativity. Yet, it is socialism in the sense that the organization they all work together for is nothing but a free-flowing structure around free artists and scientist. Managers and CEOs are nothing but 'people-smiths' whose job it is to make our knowledge workers feel welcome, connected and happy

The Creative Society

I think we are moving into a creative society where increasingly everyone has to 'create' in one way or another. When you are dealing with well-educated artistic people who can only be creative when they are operating in harmony and are 'flowing' in their activities, you have to provide a very different organizational structure and have to have a very different company culture and working environments. Computer technology costs are approaching zero over time, information has become free, the only way to add value as a human being in future decades and centuries is to develop your soul connection. The members of this community should be well-positioned for this social and economic shift.

You can find a nice description of this idea in Richard Florida, 'The Rise of the Creative Class' who developed this idea first. Though the missing dimension in this book is the spiritual angle. If all that matters in the end is communication, creativity and connectivity, spiritual path travelers should have a comparative advantage over the less connected folks. Eventually, our education system should pick up on this theme as well and probably already is.

The Creative Society

I read Richard Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class a long time ago and it left a lasting impression on me. His point is that we steadily migrate into a society in which we simply have to become creators. Our work hours become more flexible, our work arrangements more connected with other creative people. Technology is on our side too, we may have an important client video connection right out of a Starbucks location. As every creative person knows, stress is not helpful, the lust for power is distracting, all you need to do is to love what you are doing, enjoy the colleague you are working with, and just be in the flow.

Actually, it is almost a spiritual theme. Computers and robots get smarter all the time, so we human beings have to specialize in what we do best, namely being. Actually, I consider myself part of this wave. All I have to do at work is to measure the pulse of our societies, our economies and what others think about it. The more I step back from everything, the sharper my insights become. Stress is just not helpful; if I consider my colleagues as collaboraters and friends, I am miles more creative than if I consider them as competition. The other day I came up with a slogan for how I would define my current role: I am a creative analyst, having fun is my job description.